^ On
a 03 December:2003 Archbishop
of Baghdad Emmanuel-Karim Delly [photo >] is appointed
patriarch of Babylon, spiritual leader of the estimated 1 million Chaldean
Catholics around the world. He takes the name Emmanuel III Delly. He was
born on 06 October 1927 and ordained a priest on 21 December 1952. He was
first appointed bishop (Auxiliary of Babylon) on 07 December 1962. He succeeds
Raphaël I Bidawid [07 Apr 1922 – 07 Jul 2003] who had been appointed
patriarch on 21 May 1989.2002 At Christie's in London
is held the auction “100 Years of the Teddy Bear” in which hundreds
of vintage teddy bears are sold. The top price, $51'520, is paid by the
Canadian museum Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation for a very rare hot-water
bottle teddy bear made by the German firm Steiff. It has blonde mohair,
black boot button eyes, pronounced clipped muzzle, black stitched nose,
mouth and claws, swivel head, jointed elongated limbs with felt pads, hump,
opening at front seam fastened with brass hooks, brown lace and rare original
water canister --50cm high (hand pads replaced, missing one top hook, some
thinning to face, chest, left arm and left foot and two holes in left foot
pad). This novelty teddy was expected to be a great success, but surprisingly
there was very litte interest in the bear, only 90 examples were made from
1907 to 1914. It is believed that this is the only example outside of the
Steiff archive to still have his original water canister. For
$44'300 is sold an exceptionally rare Steiff black teddy bear an exceptionally
rare Steiff black teddy bear with long black mohair, boot button eyes with
red felt disc backing, pronounced clipped muzzle with black stitched nose,
mouth and claws, swivel head, jointed elongated limbs with beige felt pads,
hump and button in ear -- 50 high (generally very good condition with minor
wear, nose restitched except for two strands, slight thinning to muzzle,
very minor thinning to front of body and seam of hump, right arm thinning
between central claws, small patch inside arm 1cm. diameter, left arm with
small bald patch at top of wrist and tip of paw, both ankles have some repair,
but plenty of fur to cover any damage, very slight bald patches and thinning
to heels and tips of feet, large holes in all pads, patched from the inside
retaining all remaining original pad). It was made after the 14 April 1912
sinking of the Titanic, when England. was in mourning. This teddy
bear is one of only 50 dozen black Steiff bears ordered for England during
this sad period. Everything and everyone was in black, including this bear.
1997 Delegates from 131 countries met in Ottawa,
Canada, to sign the Convention on the Prohibition, Use, Stockpiling, Production
and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines. 123 nations signed, but not the United
States, Russia, nor China. 1997 El Fondo Monetario
Internacional concede el mayor préstamo de su historia, un total
de $55'000 millones, a Corea del Sur, con el fin de aliviar la crisis financiera
que atraviesa el país. 1997: 700'000 trabajadores
israelíes secundan una huelga para protestar por los planes de privatización
y la reforma del sistema de pensiones llevados a cabo por el gobierno de
Benjamín Netanyahu, lo que deja al país prácticamente
paralizado. 1995 El presidente de Estados Unidos,
Bill Clinton; el de la Comisión Europea, Jacques Santer; y el presidente
de turno de la Unión Europea, Felipe González Márquez,
firman en Madrid la Nueva Agenda Transatlántica, que regirá
las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y la Unión Europea en el umbral
del siglo XXI. 1995 South Korean police arrested
former president Chun Doo Hwan on charges of orchestrating the December
1979 military coup that brought him to power. 1993
El gobernador de Barcelona, Ferrán Cardenal, sustituye a Luis Roldán
Ibáñez como director de la Guardia Civil. 1992
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to authorize a US-led multinational
force to Somalia. 1992 Roman Catholic officials
in Boston agree to pay compensation to 68 persons who claimed they were
sexually abused 25 years earlier by priest James Porter. 1991
El Gobierno de Kenia acepta la legalización de los partidos de la
oposición, tras décadas de monopartidismo.

1990 Mary Robinson es nombrada presidenta de Irlanda.

^1989 US-USSR summit presages Cold War's end
Meeting off the coast of Malta, President
George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev issue statements strongly
suggesting that the long-standing animosities at the core of the Cold
War might be coming to an end. Commentators in both the United States
and Russia went farther and declared that the Cold War was over.
The talks were part of the first-ever
summit held between the two leaders. Bush and his advisers were cautiously
optimistic about the summit, eager to follow up on the steps toward
arms control taken by the preceding Reagan administration. Gorbachev
was quite vocal about his desire for better relations with the United
States so that he could pursue his domestic reform agenda and was
more effusive in his declarations that the talks marked an important
first step toward ending the Cold War. The Russian leader stated,
"The characteristics of the Cold War should be abandoned.  He
went on to suggest that, "The arms race, mistrust, psychological and
ideological struggle, all those should be things of the past. 
Bush was somewhat more restrained in his statement: "With reform underway
in the Soviet Union, we stand at the threshold of a brand-new era
of US-Soviet relations. It is within our grasp to contribute each
in our own way to overcoming the division of Europe and ending the
military confrontation there. 
Despite the positive spin of the rhetoric, though, little of substance
was accomplished during the summit. Both sides agreed to work toward
a treaty dealing with long-range nuclear weapons and conventional
arms in 1990. Gorbachev and Bush also agreed that another summit would
take place in June 1990, in Washington DC.

^
1967 First successful human heart transplant.
Lewis Washkansky, 53, receives the first
human heart transplant, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South
Africa. Washkansky, a South African grocer dying from chronic heart
disease, received the transplant from Denise Darvall, 25, who died
fatally injured in a car accident. Surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who
trained at the University of Cape Town and in the United States, performed
the revolutionary medical operation. The technique Barnard employed
had been initially developed by a group of American researchers in
the 1950s. American surgeon Norman Shumway had achieved the first
successful heart transplant, in a dog, at Stanford University in California
in 1958. After Washkansky's
surgery, he was given drugs to suppress his immune system and keep
his body from rejecting the heart. These drugs also left him susceptible
to sickness, however, and 18 days later he died from double pneumonia.
Despite the setback, Washkansky's new heart had functioned normally
until his death. In the 1970s,
the development of better anti-rejection drugs made transplantation
more viable. Dr. Barnard continued to perform heart transplant operations,
and by the late 1970s many of his patients were living up to five
years with their new hearts. Worldwide, as of April 2000, the longest-living
heart transplant recipient was still well 23 years later. Successful
heart
transplant surgery continues to be performed today, but finding
appropriate donors is extremely difficult.  Première
succès de greffe d'un cœur humain.
Une greffe du cœur est effectuée pour la première
fois au monde. L'événement se produit dans un hôpital
du Cap (Afrique du Sud). Du jour au lendemain, le professeur Chris
Barnard devient mondialement célèbre. Son patient, Louis
Washkansky, ne survivra cependant que 18 jours. En France, la première
greffe du coeur sera effectuée l'année suivante par
le professeur Christian Cabrol. Son patient ne survivra que deux jours.
Mais très vite, grâce à une plus grande maîtrise
technique et à de meilleurs médicaments anti-rejets,
les nouveaux greffés gagnent en délai de survie. Le
record appartient à un Américain qui a survécu
21 ans à la greffe et à un Français, Emmanuel
Vitria, décédé près de 20 ans après
l'opération.  Christian Barnard realiza con notable
éxito en Ciudad del Cabo (Sudáfrica) el primer trasplante
de corazón en seres humanos de la historia; el paciente, Philip
Blaiber (???), vivió 594 días después de la operación.

^1965 Conditions for Vietnam bombing halt In a confidential memorandum
to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Assistant Secretary of Defense
John McNaughton outlines the terms that should precede any permanent
bombing halt. He said that North Vietnam must not only cease infiltration
efforts, but also take steps to withdraw troops currently operating
in South Vietnam. In addition, the Viet Cong should agree to terminate
terror and sabotage activities and allow Saigon to exercise "governmental
functions over substantially all of South Vietnam.  McNaughton
did not believe that these conditions would soon be obtained, however,
as they amounted to "capitulation by a communist force that is far
from beaten. 

^
1962 Report: Viet Cong prepared for long war
Roger Hilsman, director of the State
Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, sends a memorandum
to Secretary of State Dean Rusk pointing out that the communist Viet
Cong fighters are obviously prepared for a long struggle. While government
control of the countryside had improved slightly, the Viet Cong had
expanded considerably in size and influence, both through its own
efforts and because of its attraction to "increasingly frustrated
non-communist, anti-Diem elements.  According to Hilsman, successfully
eradicating the Viet Cong would take several years of greater effort
by both the United States and the South Vietnamese government of President
Ngo Dinh Diem. Real success, he noted, depended upon Diem gaining
the support of the South Vietnamese people through social and military
measures, which he had so far failed to implement. Hilsman felt that
a noncommunist coup against Diem "could occur at any time," and would
seriously disrupt or reverse counterinsurgency momentum. As it turned
out, Hilsman was eventually proven correct. On November 1, 1963, dissident
South Vietnamese generals led a coup resulting in the murder of Diem.
His death marked the end of civilian authority and political stability
in South Vietnam. The succession of military juntas, coups, and attempted
coups in 1964 and early 1965 weakened the government severely and
disrupted the momentum of the counterinsurgency effort against the
Viet Cong.

^1944 Greek Civil War starts in Athens In Athens, Greece, the Committee
of the People's Army (ELAS), a resistance group made up of Greek Communists,
launches an offensive against Greece's democratic government and British
troops, six weeks after the city was liberation from German occupation.
Greece had been in Axis hands since German and Italian forces defeated
tough Greek opposition in 1941, prompting the establishment of two
underground Greek resistance groups--the National Democratic Greek
Army (EDES) and the ELAS. Athens, the capital of Greece, was liberated
on October 14, 1944, by British forces assisted by the EDES. By November
11, the liberation of Greece was complete and British and Greek authorities
demanded the demobilization of the EDES and the ELAS. The EDES complied,
but the ELAS refused. The Greek Communists had been bribed with arms
by the Germans not to assist in the British liberation and on December
3 they turned their German weapons against Greece's liberators. Over
the next few weeks, the ELAS rebels succeed in capturing a large portion
of Athens and the city of Piraeus before two British squadrons arrive
from the Italian front to suppress the Communist uprising. By January
11, 1945, only a few isolated Communist positions remain in the mountains,
and the ELAS rebels are forced to surrender.

^
1912 First Balkan War ends
Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro sign an armistice with Turkey, ending
the first Balkan War. During the brief conflict, a military coalition
between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro expelled Turkey from
all of the Ottoman Empire's former European possessions, except Constantinople.
In 1913, the Second Balkan War begins after Serbia demands that Bulgaria
cede to it portions of Macedonia. Bulgaria is subsequently defeated
by a loose alliance between Serbia, Romania, Greece, and Turkey, and
Macedonia is partitioned between the four victors. However, nationalist
tension persists in the Balkans and in 1914 hostility between Serbia
and the Austria-Hungary Empire over Austria's possession of Bosnia-Herzegovina
reaches a breaking point, precipitating the outbreak of World War
I. On 28 June, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinates Austrian
archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to a declaration of
war against Serbia by Austria-Hungary one month later, which sets
off a chain reaction in Europe that brings every major power into
the war by August.

^1901 Theodore Roosevelt urges control of conglomerates
Theodore Roosevelt took the House floor
on 03 December 1901 to deliver a 20'000-word consideration of business
conglomerations. Roosevelt called on Congress to curb the nation's
trusts, though he urged the need for legislation that stayed "within
reasonable limits.  Despite this caveat, Roosevelt is often
remembered as an ardent trust buster who crusaded against the rise
of big business. In fact, Roosevelt was hardly a constant foe of the
business community: He came from a wealthy family and neither disdained
money nor the growth of business combinations. Rather, he plied a
more conservative approach and sought policy which balanced free market
principles with the "best interests" of the US public, allowing trusts
to exist, albeit within carefully measured limits.

^ 1818 Illinois is admitted as 21st US stateIllinois
achieves statehood. Though Illinois presented unique challenges
to immigrants unaccustomed to the soil and vegetation of the area,
it grew to become a bustling and densely populated state.
The strange but beautiful prairie lands east of the Mississippi and
north of Lake Michigan presented a difficult challenge to the tide
of westward-moving immigrants. Accustomed to the heavily forested
lands of states like Kentucky and Tennessee, the early immigrants
to Illinois did not know what to make of the vast treeless stretches
of the prairie. Most pioneers believed that the fertility of soil
revealed itself by the abundance of vegetation it supported, so they
assumed that the lack of trees on the prairie signaled inferior farmland.
Those brave souls who did try to farm the prairie found that their
flimsy plows were inadequate to cut through prairie sod thickly knotted
with deep roots. In an "age of wood," farmers also felt helpless without
ready access to the trees they needed for their tools, homes, furniture,
fences, and fuel. For all these reasons, most of the early Illinois
settlers remained in the southern part of the state, where they built
homes and farms near the trees that grew along the many creek and
river bottoms. The challenge
of the prairies slowed emigration into the region; when Illinois was
granted statehood in 1818, the population was only about 35'000, and
most of the prairie was still largely unsettled. Gradually, though,
a few tough Illinois farmers took on the difficult task of plowing
the prairie and discovered that the soil was far richer than they
had expected. The development of heavy prairie plows and improved
access to wood and other supplies through new shipping routes encouraged
even more farmers to head out into the vast northern prairie lands
of Illinois. By 1840, the center
of population in Illinois had shifted decisively to the north, and
the once insignificant hamlet of Chicago rapidly became a bustling
city. The four giant prairie counties of northern Illinois, which
were the last to be settled, boasted population densities of 7 persons
per square kilometer. Increasingly recognized as one of the nation's
most fertile agricultural areas, the vast emptiness of the Illinois
prairie was eagerly conquered by both pioneers and plows

1685 Charles II bars Jews from settling in Stockholm Sweden
1621 Galileo perfects the telescope
1586 Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England, from Colombia
1563 Se celebra la vigésimo quinta y última
sesión del Concilio de Trento. 1557 Under
the leadership of John Knox, the Protestants of Scotland sign their "First
Covenant" at Edinburgh, uniting Presbyterians under the name: "Congregation
of the Lord.  1170 Archbishop of Canterbury
Thomas Becket, 52, returns to England after six years of exile in France.
(Becket would be martyred on December 29th of this year killed by soldiers
sent by his former friend, English King Henry II.) 0741
St Zachary begins his reign as Pope.

2004 Fourteen persons by car bomb at the Shiite Hameed
al-Najar mosque, in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood Azamiyah, in Baghdad,
Iraq. 19 persons are wounded. Sheik Ahmed Hassan Al-Taha, imam of the Sunni
Abu Hanifa mosque in the same neighborhood, comments: “Iraqi resistance
has nothing to do with bombing mosques and churches and killing innocent
people in markets and streets. These acts are against the law of God.”2004 Sixteen policemen when guerrillas in 11 cars attack
with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire a police station in the
Amil district of Baghdad, Iraq, near the road to the airport. They kill
16 policemen , loot weapons, release prisoners and set fire to cars. Several
policemen and prisoners are wounded. On a web site, the terrorist group
“al-Qaida in Iraq”, headed by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
brags of its success in this attack, claiming to have killed 30, with only
2 survivors escaping.2004 All members of two police patrols
in the western Baghdad area of Nafq al-Shorta neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq,
according to bragging by “al-Qaida in Iraq”.2004
One policeman some 25 of the attackers of four police stations
in Mosul, Iraq. Two policemen are wounded. Three attackers are captured.2004 A US soldier on patrol near Kirkuk, Iraq, by a roadside
bomb. Two US soldiers are wounded.2004 A suicide car bomber
and two US Marines of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, at their
forward operating base near Iraq's border with Jordan.2004
Shiing-shen Chern, mathematician, naturalized US citizen, born
in China on 26 October 1911. His area of research was differential geometry
where he studied the (now named) Chern characteristic classes in fibre spaces.
These are important not only in mathematics but also in mathematical physics.
He worked on characteristic classes during his 1943-1945 visit to Princeton
and, also at that time, he gave a now famous proof of the Gauss-Bonnet formula.
2003 Richard Chester “Jeff” Brown,
77, of a heart attack while walking near home. He was a New York City magazine
editor and short-story writer who authored the children's books Flat
Stanley (1964) , Stanley and the Magic Lamp, Stanley in Space,
Stanley's Christmas Adventure, Invisible Stanley, and Stanley, Flat Again!.
2002 Fatima Mohammad Hasson Abeid, 95, Palestinian
woman from Ramallah, shot in the back by an Israeli soldier who fired 17
shots while running after the taxi in which she was, on the dirt road between
the Surda and Ayosh junctions north of Ramallah, because it was heading
toward a road forbidden to Palestinians, though it posed no threat to anyone.

^
2000 Gwendolyn Brooks, 83, poet, of cancer.
Gwendolyn Brooks promoted an understanding
of Black culture through her candid, compassionate poetry and became
the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize. She wrote hundreds
of poems, had more than 20 books published, and had been Illinois'
poet laureate since 1968. Her poetry delved into poverty, racism and
drugs among black people. I
believe that we should all know each other, we human carriers of so
many pleasurable differences," she said in an interview not long before
her death. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep
or destroy.  The poet
dies at her home, surrounded by friends and family members who had
been taking turns reading to her.
Her Pulitzer was awarded in 1950 for her second book of poetry, Annie
Allen. One of her most famous poems is We Real Cool,
from the 1960 collection The Bean Eaters. The short poem
sums up hopelessness in eight lines:
"We real cool. We/Left school. We/Lurk late. We/Strike straight. We/Sing
sin. We/Thin gin. We/Jazz June. We/Die soon
Brooks continued to write throughout her life and had completed her
most recent volume of poems late in the 2000 summer. Her activity
regarding her creative muse was very high. She continued to speak
and read and do all sorts of appearances.
In 1989, Brooks received a lifetime achievement award from the National
Endowment for the Arts. She was named the 1994 Jefferson Lecturer
by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the highest honor bestowed
by the federal government for work in the humanities.
Brooks was born in Topeka, Kan., in 1917, but grew up in Chicago.
She began writing at 11 when she mailed several poems to a community
newspaper in Chicago to surprise her family. Her early works were
mostly autobiographical, detailing the death of friends, her relationship
with her family and their reaction to war and racism.
After a number of her poems had been published in Chicago's Black
newspapers, Brooks sent 19 poems to a list of publishers. I
said to myself, I'm going to go straight down that list until somebody
takes these poems," she said. Harper & Bros., now HarperCollins, was
at the top of the list. Its editors suggested she needed more poems,
then published the collection in 1945 in a book called A Street
in Bronzeville. Annie Allen followed four years later.
Brooks often referred to her works
as her family, which also included Black people in general. If
you have one drop of Blackness blood in you  yes, of course
it comes out red  you are mine," she once said. You are
a member of my family.  But she was quick to point that she
wasn't exclusionary, noting that she had the liveliest interest in
other families. Brooks was also
known as a tireless teacher, promoter and advocate of creative writing
in general and poetry in particular. She mentored literally
three generations of poets - black, white, Hispanic, Native American,"
said longtime friend, poet and literature professor Haki Madhubuti,
who founded the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Creative Writing and Black
Literature at Chicago State University. She was all over the
map sharing her gifts. 
She used her prestige as Illinois' poet laureate to inspire young
writers, establishing the Illinois Poet Laureate Awards in 1969 to
encourage elementary and high school students to write. She said she
found it intoxicating and exciting to see young talent. She would
attend poetry slams in Chicago, where aspiring poets would line up
to read their works, and she often financed awards to the poet voted
the best reader by the audience. Brooks once said of the awards she
received  including having a bronze sculpture of her placed
in the National Portrait Gallery  that there was only one that
meant a great deal to her: "In December 1967, at a workshop called
the Kumuba Workshop in a rundown theater in Chicago, I was given an
award for just being me, and that's what poetry is to me  just
being me.  Survivors include
her daughter, Nora Brooks Blakely, son Henry Blakely III, and a grandson.
Her husband, poet and writer, Henry Blakely Jr., died in 1996.
 Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks, escritora estadounidense.

^
1984: 2889 die from Union Carbide poison gas emission
in Bhopal, India In the early
morning hours, one of the worst industrial disasters in history begins
when a pesticide plant located in the densely populated region of
Bhopal in central India leaks a highly toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate
into the air. Of the nearly one million people living in Bhopal at
the time, 2889 people are killed immediately, at least 300'000 are
injured, and as many as 8000 have died since. The leak was caused
by a series of mechanical and human errors in the pesticide producing
plant, operated by the Union Carbide Corporation. For a full hour,
the plant's personnel and safety equipment failed to detect the massive
leak, and when an alarm was finally sounded, most of the harm had
already been done. To make matters worse, local health officials had
not been educated on the toxicity of the chemicals used at the Union
Carbide plant and therefore there were no emergency procedures in
place to protect Bhopal's citizens in the event of a chemical leak.
After the disaster, a civil suit filed against Union Carbide eventually
results in a settlement awards of between five hundred and one thousand
dollars to the most seriously injured survivors, although at least
100,000 people whose health was adversely affected by the accident
do not receive compensation.

1979 Eleven persons in a crush of fans at Cincinnati's
Riverfront Coliseum, where the British rock group The Who was performing.
1957 Frank E Gannett, 81, newspaper publisher dies
at 81 1956 Felix
Bernstein, mathematician.1956 Alexandr Mikhailovich
Rodchenko, Russian painter, sculptor, designer, and photographer
born on 05 December (23 November Julian) 1891, an important member of the
Constructivist movement.  LINKS

Foreign Minister Tanner announces that the waters around Åland
have been mined to protect the islands.

Church services are cancelled in the cities and other main centers
of population because of the danger of air raids. Large numbers
of civilians leave Helsinki, Viipuri, Turku, Kotka and many other
cities for the safety of the interior.

^
1894 Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson, 44, Scottish
novelist and poet, author of Treasure
Island and Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in Scotland.
Born on 13 November 1850, Stevenson studied civil engineering and
law, but decided to pursue a career as a writer and began publishing
essays and travel pieces. His decision alienated his parents, who
expected him to follow the family trade of lighthouse keeping. The
family wasn't reconciled for years.
In 1876, Stevenson fell in love with an American woman named Fanny
Vandegrift Osbourne, who was separated from her husband. When she
returned to San Francisco in 1879, Stevenson followed her. The couple
married and returned to Scotland in 1880. Stevenson published a collection
of essays in 1881, and Treasure
Island, one of his most popular books, in 1883. In 1885,
he published the first version of the popular nursery-rhyme book A
Child's Garden of Verses. In 1846, he published Kidnapped,
and in 1886 he published The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In 1888, the family set off for the South Seas, seeking a healthier
climate for Stevenson's tuberculosis. The family finally settled in
Samoa, where Stevenson died.  D'abord
étudiant en droit, il se met ensuite à écrire
des livres pour enfants dont " L'Île au Trésor ", c'est
un vrai chef d'oeuvre. Puis, c'est "Le cas du docteur Jekyll et de
Mr Hyde " . En raison de sa santé, il se retire dans l'île
de Samoa, dans le Pacifique, où il devient l'ami des indigènes,
et où il mourra en 1894.
STEVENSON ONLINE:

1890 Carl Hilgers, German artist born on 14 April 1818.1853 Nicolás Rodríguez Peña, político
argentino. 1851 Le représentant Baudin, sur
une barricade en tentant, mais en vain, de soulever le peuple de Paris contre
le coup d'état de Louis-Napoléon. 1789 Claude
Joseph Vernet, French painter born on 14 August 1714. . 
MORE
ON VERNET AT ART 4 DECEMBER
with links to images.1719 François Marot
(or Maret), French artist born in 1666.1552 Saint Francis
Xavier, Jesuit missionary, in China, where he contracted a fever
while waiting for permission to preach. 1352 Clement,
pope, by lightning. He acquired Avignon in France for the papacy. He defended
the Franciscans against their enemies, preached a failed crusade, treated
the Jews with kindness, raised taxes to support a luxurious papal court,
and showed courage during the Black Death. 1154 Anastasius
IV,.the pope who restored the Pantheon building. 0780
San Virgilio, obispo y apóstol irlandés.

IT
(temporary code name: the permanent name is not likely to be the initials
of Segway Human Innovative Transporter) is a standup vehicle on one
axle wiith a T-shaped handle. Gyroscopes keep it steady and its computer
and sensors responds to the rider action on the handle so as to go
forward, backward, faster, slower, turn even on one spot (one wheel
going forward and the other backward), or stop. Pilot models are demonstrater
on the ABC TV show Good Morning America[photo >].
It will run all day on an overnight
charge of its battery (by plugging it in to an ordinary wall outlet),
at a maximum speed of 20 km/h. The US Postal Service intends to test
the first heavy-duty production models (at 36 kg and $8000 each) for
its letter carriers. Consumer models will come later, weighing 30
kg and costing $3000). Just what
couch potatoes need to keep completely out of shape, by now eliminating
even walking. It is the creation
of inventor Dean
Kamen [05 Apr 1951~] [< 16 March 2001 photo],
50, who holds roughly 100 US patents, including those for a heart
stent, a wheelchair that can climb stairs, and the first portable
kidney dialysis machine.

1963 Theresa Marie Schindler “Terri”
Schiavo, in Pennsylvania, daughter of Mary and Robert Schindler.
On 10 November 1984 Terri married Michael Schiavo. On 25 February 1990 Terri
Schiavo collapsed in her home. It is believed that a potassium imbalance
(resulting from bulimia) caused her heart to temporarily stop, cutting off
oxygen to her brain. She fell into a coma which later becomes a permanent
vegetative state; she was fed through a feeding tube. She became the subject
of a highly publicized ethico-politico-legal tug-of-war between her husband
who said that, long before her collapse, she had told him that she would
not want to be kept alive under such conditions, and that therefore the
feeding tube must be removed, and her parents who insisted that she be kept
alive in the hope that she might recover. Despite multiple interventions
by politicians and other publicity-seeking personalities, the courts rule
repeatedly in favor of the husband. The feeding tube is removed on 18 March
2005, stays removed during the grotesque struggle, and Terri Schiavo dies
on 31 March 2005.1960 Camelot, the musical,
opens on Broadway. 1953 Kismet, the musical,
opens on Broadway. 1952 Mel Smith author (Morons
From Outer Space) [Has anyone thought of writing Mormons From Outer
Space ?]1949 La Alta Comisaría de las Naciones
Unidas para los Refugiados (ACNUR) se crea. 1947
A Streetcar Named Desire, play by Tennessee Williams,
opens on Broadway.1946 Poemas de Alberto Caeiro
y Odas de Ricardo Reis, de Fernando Antonio Nogueira
Pessoa, se publican. 1934 Nicolas Coster London,
(Lionel-Santa Barbara, Electric Horseman) 1926 El huésped
del sevillano, zarzuela del maestro Jacinto Guerrero y Torres,
se estrena en el teatro Apolo de Madrid. 1924 John
Backus, mathematician, inventor of the FORTRAN computer language.
1917 Manuel Solís Palma, político
panameño. 1917 Quebec Bridge opens. At the
time, it was the world's longest cantilever truss span, (in which stiff
trusses extend from the bridge piers, without additional support). 1915 Manuel Tuñón de Lara, historiador español.
1908 C.F.D. Moule, Anglican clergyman and New Testament
scholar. He authored numerous autographs on Biblical studies, including
The Phenomenology of the New Testament (1967).

^
1903 John von Neumann, Hungarian-born mathematician
and astronomer (Bocher Award 1938) who died on 08 February 1957.
Although mathematician John von Neumann
is best known for his work on the Manhattan Project, helping develop
the atomic bomb, he also played a critical role in the history of
the electronic computer. After consulting with John Mauchly and Presper
Eckert (developers of ENIAC, one of the first electronic computers),
von Neumann proposed a method for adding memory to an electronic computer
and wrote a 101-page proposal detailing EDVAC (Electronic Discrete
Variable Automatic Computer), an electronic computer with memory.
The proposal, which also described in detail the thinking behind ENIAC,
later became an important piece of evidence in the patent suit that
ultimately denied Mauchly and Eckert patents on ENIAC.

1903 Goldstein,
mathematician. 1902 Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilot who
flew the lead plane in Japan's air attack on Pearl Harbor (12/7/1941). Following
WWII, through representatives of the Pocket Testament League, Fuchida was
converted to Christianity in 1950. 1900 Richard Kuhn
Austria, biochemist, worked with vitamins (Nobel '38)

^
1896 Tabulating Machine Company (future IBM) is incorporated.
Hermann Hollerith incorporated the
Tabulating Machine Company on this day in 1896. At age twenty-nine,
Hollerith, who had worked at the Census Bureau in 1880, won a competition
to develop the most efficient counting system for the 1890 census.
His tabulating machine counted punched cards, inspired by a card system
developed by Joseph Jacquard of France to program patterns into textile
looms. Through a series of mergers and reorganizations, the Tabulating
Machine Company eventually became IBM.

^1879 The electric light bulb is demonstrated by Edison In 1878, while on an expedition
to measure a solar eclipse, Thomas Edison boasted that he could create
a safe, cheap, electric light: Although electric arc lights had existed
for more than ten years, their high intensity made them a fire hazard.
Financiers, including J.P. Morgan and the Vanderbilt family, took
Edison at his word and established the Edison Electric Light Company
later that year. After more than a year of experiments, Edison and
his young assistant, Francis Upton, finally developed a carbon filament
that would burn in a vacuum in a glass bulb for forty hours. They
demonstrated the light bulb to their backers on Dec. 3, 1879, and
by the end of the month, were exhibiting the invention to the public.
On December 31, 1879, the Pennsylvania Railroad ran special trains
to Edison's Menlo Park laboratory to let the public witness a demonstration
of the invention.

1857 Salvador Rueda, poeta

^
1857 Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowskij "Joseph Conrad" Born of Polish parents,
Conrad would become one of the greatest English novelist and short-story,
whose works include the novels Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo
(1904), and The
Secret Agent (1907) and the short story Heart
of Darkness (1902). Józef
spent his early childhood in northern Russia, where his father, a
Polish poet and patriot, had been exiled. His parents both died of
tuberculosis when he was 12. An uncle raised Joseph for the next five
years. At age 17, Korzeniowskij set out for Marseilles, France, where
he joined the merchant marine and sailed to the West Indies. His many
harrowing adventures at sea set the scene for much of his work.
In 1878, when Korzeniowskij was 21,
he traveled to England as a deck hand on a British freighter. He perfected
his English during six voyages on a small British trade boat and spent
16 years with the British merchant navy. He had numerous adventures
around the world, became a British subject in 1886, and got his first
command in 1888. In 1889 he commanded a Congo River steamboat for
four months, which set the stage for his well-known story Heart
of Darkness(1902). Korzeniowskij
began writing in the late 1890s and used the name Conrad. His first
novel, Almayer's Folly, was published in 1895. In 1896 he
married an English woman and gave up the sea to write full time. His
work evolved from hearty sea-adventure tales to sophisticated and
pessimistic explorations of morals, personal choices, and character.
His best-known works, including Lord Jim, Nostromo and The Secret
Agent, were published between 1900 and 1911, and brought him financial
security. In A Personal Record (also titled Some
Reminiscences)Conrad relates that his first introduction
to the English language was at the age of eight, when his father was
translating the works of Shakespeare. In
July 1876 he sailed to the West Indies, as a steward on the Saint-Antoine.
On this gunrunning voyage, Conrad sailed along the coast of Venezuela,
memories of which were to find a place in Nostromo.
The first mate of the vessel, a Corsican named Dominic Cervoni, was
the model for the hero of that novel and was to play a picturesque
role in Conrad's life and work. In
April 1881 Conrad joined the Palestine, a bark of 425 tons.
This move proved to be an important event in his life; it took him
to the Far East for the first time, and it was also a continuously
troubled voyage, which provided him with literary material that he
would use later. Beset by gales, accidentally rammed by a steamer,
and deserted by a sizable portion of her crew, the Palestine nevertheless
had made it as far as the East Indies when her cargo of coal caught
fire and the crew had to take to the lifeboats; Conrad's initial landing
in the East, on an island off Sumatra, took place only after a 13-1/2-hour
voyage in an open boat. In 1898 Conrad published his account of his
experiences on the Palestine, with only slight alterations, as the
short story Youth,
a remarkable tale of a young officer's first command. In
1883 Conrad joined the Narcissus at Bombay. This voyage gave
him material for his novel The Nigger of the "Narcissus,",
the story of an egocentric black sailor's deterioration and death
aboard ship. In February 1887
Conrad sailed as first mate on the Highland Forest, bound
for Semarang, Java. Her captain was John McWhirr, whom he later immortalized
under the same name as the heroic, unimaginative captain of the steamer
Nan Shan in Typhoon. He then joined the Vidar, a locally
owned steamship trading among the islands of the southeast Asian archipelago.
During the five or six voyages he made in four and a half months,
Conrad was discovering and exploring the world he was to re-create
in his first novels, Almayer's
Folly, An
Outcast of the Islands, and Lord
Jim, as well as several short stories. After
leaving the Vidar Conrad unexpectedly obtained his first command,
on the Otago, sailing from Bangkok, an experience out of which he
was to make his stories The
Shadow Line and Falk.
In London in the summer of 1889, Conrad
began to write Almayer's
Folly. He interrupted that to go to the Congo Free State,
which was four years old as a political entity and already notorious
as a sphere of imperialistic exploitation. Conrad obtained the command
of a Congo River steamboat. What he saw, did, and felt in his 4 months
in the Congo are largely recorded in Heart
of Darkness, his most famous, finest, and most enigmatic
story, the title of which signifies not only the heart of Africa,
the dark continent, but also the heart of evil--everything that is
corrupt, nihilistic, malign--and perhaps the heart of man. The story
is central to Conrad's work and vision, and it is difficult not to
think of his Congo experiences as traumatic. He may have exaggerated
when he said, "Before the Congo I was a mere animal," but in a real
sense the dying Kurtz's cry, "The horror! The horror!" was Conrad's.
He suffered psychological, spiritual, even metaphysical shock in the
Congo, and his physical health was also damaged; for the rest of his
life, he was racked by recurrent fever and gout. Almayer's Folly was published in April 1895. It was as
the author of this novel that he adopted the name Conrad. Almayer's
Folly was followed in 1896 by An
Outcast of the Islands, which repeats the theme of a foolish
and blindly superficial character meeting the tragic consequences
of his own failings in a tropical region far from the company of his
fellow Europeans. These two novels provoked a misunderstanding of
Conrad's talents and purpose which dogged him the rest of his life.
Set in the Malayan archipelago, they caused him to be labeled a writer
of exotic tales, a reputation which a series of novels and short stories
about the sea--The
Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), Lord
Jim (1900), Youth
(1902), Typhoon (1902), and others--seemed only to confirm. But,
as he wrote about the Narcissus, in his view "the problem
. . . is not a problem of the sea, it is merely a problem that has
risen on board a ship where the conditions of complete isolation from
all land entanglements make it stand out with a particular force and
colouring.  This is equally true of his other works; the latter
part of Lord
Jim takes place in a jungle village not because the emotional
and moral problems that interest Conrad are those peculiar to jungle
villages, but because there Jim's feelings of guilt, responsibility,
and insecurity--feelings common to mankind--work themselves out with
a logic and inevitability that are enforced by his isolation.
Conrad's finest novels are considered
to be Lord
Jim (1900), Nostromo
(1904), The
Secret Agent (1907), and Under
Western Eyes (1911), the last being three novels of political
intrigue and romance Nostromo
(1904) is a story of revolution, politics, and financial manipulation
in a South American republic. It centers, for all its close-packed
incidents, upon one idea--the corruption of the characters by the
ambitions that they set before themselves, ambitions concerned with
silver, which forms the republic's wealth and which is the central
symbol around which the novel is organized. The ambitions range from
simple greed to idealistic desires for reform and justice. All lead
to moral disaster, and the nobler the ambition the greater its possessor's
self-disgust as he realizes his plight. Heart
of Darkness,(one of the Two Other Stories in Youth
and Two Other Stories, the third one being The End of
the Tether) which follows closely the actual For Conrad's Congo
journey, tells of the narrator's fascination by a mysterious white
man, Kurtz, who, by his eloquence and hypnotic personality, dominates
the brutal tribesmen around him. Full of contempt for the greedy traders
who exploit the natives, the narrator cannot deny the power of this
figure of evil who calls forth from him something approaching reluctant
loyalty. The
Secret Agent (1907) is a sustained essay in the ironic and
one of Conrad's finest works. It deals with the equivocal world of
anarchists, police, politicians, and agents provocateurs in London.
Victory describes the unsuccessful attempts of a detached,
nihilistic observer of life to protect himself and his hapless female
companion from the murderous machinations of a trio of rogues on an
isolated island. Conrad died
on 3 August 1924.
CONRAD ONLINE: [Conrad
links]

1851 Gustav Schönleber, German artist who died on
01 February 1917.1843 Daniele Ranzoni, Italian artist
who died on 20 October 1889. — more
with links to images.1830 Lord Frederick Leighton,
English Pre-Raphaelite
painter and sculptor who died on 25 January 1896.  MORE
ON LEIGHTON AT ART 4 DECEMBER
with links to images.

^1826 George McClellan, future Union General,
is born in Philadelphia. Although
McClellan emerged early in the US Civil War as a Union hero, he failed
to effectively prosecute the war in the East. McClellan graduated
from West Point in 1846, second in his class. He served with distinction
in the Mexican War under General Winfield Scott, and continued in
the military until 1857. After retiring from the service, McClellan
served as president of the Illinois Central Railroad, where he became
acquainted with Abraham Lincoln, who was then an attorney for the
company. When the war began,
McClellan was appointed major general in charge of the Ohio volunteers.
In 1861, he command Union forces in western Virginia, where his reputation
grew as the Yankees won many small battles and secured control of
the region. Although many historians have argued that it was McClellan's
subordinates who deserved most of the credit, McClellan was elevated
to commander of the main Union army in the east, the Army of the Potomac,
following that army's humiliating defeat at the First Battle of Bull
Run. McClellan took command
in July 1861 and did an admirable job of building an effective force.
He was elevated to general-in-chief of all Union armies when his commander
during the Mexican War, Scott, retired at the end of October. McClellan
was beloved by his soldiers but was arrogant and contemptuous of Lincoln
and the Republican leaders in Congress. A staunch Democrat, he was
opposed to attacking the institution of slavery as a war measure.
While his work as an administrator earned high marks, his weakness
was revealed when he took the field with his army in the spring of
1862. McClellan lost to Robert
E. Lee during the Seven Days' battles, and as a field commander he
was sluggish, hesitant, and timid. President Lincoln then moved most
of McClellan's command to John Pope, but Pope was beaten badly by
Lee at the Second Battle of Bull Run. When Lee invaded Maryland in
September 1862, Lincoln restored McClellan's command. Though the president
had grave misgivings about McClellan's leadership, he wrote during
the emergency that "we must use the tools we have...There is no man
in the Army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops
into shape half as well as he."
McClellan pursued Lee into western Maryland, and on 17 September 1862
the two armies fought to a standstill along Antietam Creek. Heavy
loses forced Lee to return to Virginia, providing McClellan with a
nominal victory. Shortly after the battle, Lincoln declared the Emancipation
Proclamation, which converted the war into a crusade against slavery,
a measure bitterly criticized by McClellan. The general's failure
to pursue Lee into Virginia led Lincoln to order McClellan's permanent
removal in November. The Democrats nominated McClellan for president
in 1864. He ran against his old boss, but managed to garner only 21
of 233 electoral votes. After the war, he served as governor of New
Jersey. He died on 29 October 1885, in Orange, New Jersey.

1793 William Clarkson Frederick Stanfield, English painter
who died on 18 May 1867.  MORE
ON STANFIELD AT ART 4 DECEMBER
with links to images.1755 Gilbert Stuart, US painter
specialized in portraits, who died on 09 July 1828.  MORE
ON STUART AT ART 4 DECEMBER
with links to images. 1729 Padre Antonio Soler Olot
Spain, composer (Fandango) 1684 Ludvig Baron Holberg,
a founder of Danish & Norwegian literature 1621 Pieter Gysels (or Gheysels, Gyzens, Gysen), Flemish
painter who died in 1690. — more
with links to images. 1368 Charles VI [the Well-Beloved], king of France
(1380-1422)